Wednesday, October 28, 2009

It's Wednesday night, Hannah is in bed, Colby is at a basketball game (she plays), I'm watching the Yankees on tv and Dave is at the game so I thought it was a good time for an update.

First, let me share some pictures from the horse show and dog costume contest this weekend. Colby and her friend Hanna dressed up Hanna's horse as a sheep. Hannah dressed up Tod as a bunny. Hannah was happy that she won the dog costume contest (although the only other dogs in the contest were the barn owners' dogs). It was a very good day, Colby did well in her first horse show at this barn.


Hannah had an appointment with her endocrinologist on Monday. We had many blood results to go over. Amongst many other things, we are watching her thyroid levels and her growth hormone levels. She is still borderline in terms of her growth. She is at the 3% range for height. Before the tumor, she was in the 50 percentile. She has hovered around that 3rd percentile now for the last year or so. Unless she falls under that range, we probably will not put her on growth hormone. We are hoping that is the case, since growth hormone can cause other problems, like tumor recurrence, even more disparity in bone growth (in other words, short spine, while other bones grow longer, causing her to look even more disproportionate than she already does) and a host of other things. It's complicated. It would also require daily injections. You know that wouldn't go over well.

Her thyroid looks fine, her vitamin C is good and her vitamin D is low. Her cholesterol is a bit high also, but we don't have the breakdown of good vs. bad, that is a more complicated test that will be done next time. We also need another urine sample to ensure her kidneys are not excreting too much of the C and D were are supplementing her with, otherwise that could cause problems (like kidney stones.) We have to keep monitoring these things for some time, since some of these issues tend to be delayed by years following radiation. It could be something we see 4-5 years down the road. Isn't that crazy?

We really like her endo, he is a compassionate and intelligent doctor. Unfortunately, those two things don't always go hand in hand with doctors. He is one of the good ones. We don't see him again until after school is out (wow, that's June!) Right now we have NO scheduled doctor appointments (well, other than her flu shot in two weeks.) That is just so strange. I think our next appointment will be brain tumor clinic in December, but not sure on that yet.
*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
CHRISTMAS ADOPTIONS

So far we have adopted 3 families for this holiday season, that's awesome! I wanted to provide a few other details on how it works.

A few people have asked me if they can adopt a family with others from their workplace or with other families. YES! If you have co-workers that would like to go in together to adopt a family, that would be great. Also, if you and another family (or others in your family) would like to get together to adopt a cancer family, that's wonderful also.

Another question posed was whether or not someone from out of town could participate in our Christmas adoptions. YES! It is probably more cost effective if you live out of town and want to help if you simply send funds to cover the cost of the gifts. I would be happy to do the shopping for the family. Anyone who knows Hannah knows that this won't be a problem for her, the girl loves to shop! If you would prefer to purchase gifts and send them, that can also be done (although the gifts will have to be shipped here, but still workable!)

After you contact me to let me know you would like a family for adoption, I will contact the hospital to request a family in need. I ask them for names of patient, siblings and parents; ages of all children, sizes of all children and any specific wishes and interests of the family. When all information is received I will pass that along to you. Gifts can then be purchased, wrapped and tagged. The gifts are dropped off to me at my house (or if you live closer to the hospital, they will go directly there). I will take all of the gifts in approximately 1-2 weeks before Christmas. The hospital handles the delivery of the gifts to the family. We leave it up to the family to decide if they would like the children to know the gifts are from "Santa" or from the parents, or otherwise. Some families with small children may not want them to know they are being "adopted" for Christmas.

I hope that clears up some questions, but please let me know if there is something I did not answer.

Still watching the Yankee game, not too good so far! Ok, now it's 4-0 and I should go to bed.

♥Kim